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Op-ed on rolling blackouts: It's economics, not politics, sustaining generation during polar vortices and such – Power Engineering Magazine

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Photo of Martha’s Task offices, Bartlesville, OK, courtesy of Laura Summers

By Rod Walton, content director for Power Engineering and POWERGEN+

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Hello PE readers, I typically take my stories posted here and then share them via social media. This time I’m doing it backwards.

I wrote this up for my personal Facebook after seeing so many posts blaming this or that generation resource for the rolling blackouts hitting the U.S. south and midwest. As you know, system operations like MISO, SPP and ERCOT are cutting power for hours at a time so it can match demand to supply during this incredible cold streak.

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It was written to share with friends who are not experts in the industry, but then neither am I compared to you, the industry professional. It may be oversimplified, but hopefully it contains clarity and truth. Here is my FB commentary:

Parks and Recreation.

“I’ve seen a few of my Facebook friends blame clean energy resources such as frozen wind turbines in Texas as cause for the rolling power outages. As a guy who has covered energy for 13 years, I can tell you that is not the real problem.

“The real issue is economics and supply and demand balances. Electricity cannot be stored or saved in a tank on any utility-scale level right now, so it flows and flows until it is consumed or grounded. Utilities must plan based on long-developed and accurate forecasts to balance load and demand. They don’t have capacity to keep gas in the tank, so to speak.

“Power plants are giant things with millions of parts which must move in tandem. Few of them can just fire up and down at will, so they operate at a certain percentage capacity for a period of time, then ratcheted up or down as need be. Those moves take time.Right now we have households hoarding as much heat as they can, and furnaces or heating elements are working overtime. This pulls from the grid, which in turns is powered by the generators at the plant.

“Those supply scenarios don’t turn on a dime. Utilities must plan ahead and spend millions in capital to meet the demand they forecast way out ahead. Why does a grocery store run out of bread and toilet paper? Because they plan their inventories way out in front, then a virus or an election or just some rumor about Revelations unfolding happens, and fearful residents buy up and hoard. Thus, the shortages. And this cold streak is an unprecedented event, so it puts an unforeseen strain on the grid. It is not the utility’s fault, nor any particular power resource such as coal, nuclear, gas, wind or solar. It’s just economics, plus human behavior.

“We need it all — fossil, nuclear and other zero-carbon resources. Carbon emissions and climate impact are real. Balance is key. Politics are not.”

(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering, POWERGEN International and the virtual POWERGEN+ series, which resumes Wednesday and Thursday at www.powergenplus.com. He is a 13-year veteran covering energy both as a newspaper reporter, business editor and events content director. Walton can be reached at 918-831-9177 and rod.walton@clarionevents.com).

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Politics

Former PQ minister turns back on politics, records jazz album

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A former minister with the Parti Québécois (PQ) says his time in politics is over, and he’s ready to focus on his first love: the arts.

“People have to remember that I was dealing with the arts for 30 years before I went into politics,” Maka Kotto tells CTV News a day before boarding a flight to his native Cameroon for a music festival. “After 14 years in politics, I felt that I did what I had to do. And so, I decided to get back to my old practices.”

Kotto represented the PQ in the riding of Bourget from 2008 to 2018 and was also the culture minister in Pauline Marois’ short-lived government.

In addition to his time in provincial politics, Kotto represented the Bloc Québécois from 2004 to 2008 in the Canadian House of Commons — the party’s first Black member of Parliament.

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“It drained my energy and I lost contact with my family, with my friends. When I was inside, I didn’t realize that,” he said. “My mother went to the other side in 2018 and I couldn’t say good-bye… I wrote a song about that.”

Kotto says his mother’s death was a moment that notably marked him.

“This was very awful. Until now, I still suffer for that,” he said. “You see, when you’re investing in politics, you have many, many sacrifices that you’re facing.”

Closing the political door and turning his attention back to music and acting was an effortless decision for the 62-year-old.

“This was much, much more, easier than politics,” he said.

Kotto says he remembers his father not liking the idea of him getting involved in the arts as a child — he wanted him to “be a good student.”

“The last time I sang, I was between 16 or 17 years old,” he recalls. “That was in college, at the boarding school church. It was a French Jesuit boarding school in Cameroon.”

When asked what’s scarier: putting out a jazz album or working in politics, Kotto doesn’t miss a beat.

“Oh, politics is scary because you don’t have fun in politics. You have problems every day, every night, every morning and you have to solve real problems,” he said. “When you’re singing, it’s a passion…The only goal you have to reach is to share what you feel.”

Kotto says he worked for about six months on his album, collaborating with the likes of Antoine Gratton, Taurey Butler and the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal (ONJ).

“We have a lot of fun. That was the goal, and I hope that everybody listening to this album will have the same fun as the one we had in studio,” he said.

A few words he uses to describe his music: fun, love and friendship.

The release of Kotto’s first album is scheduled for the winter of 2024.

 

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

The Trump campaign is saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was referring only to the US auto industry when he warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected. Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona debate what he meant.

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Politics

Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

The Trump campaign is saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was referring only to the US auto industry when he warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected. Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona debate what he meant.


02:48

– Source:
CNN

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